


Moments of Agony

by meyari



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Deathfic, Future Fic, M/M, Murder, Resurrection, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyari/pseuds/meyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jor-El warned that if humans got the Elements of Power it would mean the destruction of the Earth.  He was right.  It's up to Lex to save the world by doing the one thing he cannot stand to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments of Agony

Lex braced himself outside Clark's room. Mercy waited with him, holding the tray that held Clark's food, all of it soft and mushy. Clark couldn't eat anything more than that. Just looking at the tray made his rage and helplessness rise. Lex wouldn't allow his upset to show in front of Clark. Clark needed him to be strong. Even if Clark couldn't see him, he needed Lex to sound strong. It took a couple of minutes for Lex to master his emotions but eventually he opened the door and went in.

"Clark?" Lex said. He flipped on the light that Clark insisted be off when he was alone. "It's Lex. I brought you some food."

"Lex?" Clark's voice was thready. His face didn't turn towards Lex. It was a small blessing that Lex was absurdly grateful for. Lex had a hard time looking at Clark's once-beautiful face. "It's too far away, Lex. It doesn't hurt enough."

"We can't put it any closer, Clark," Lex said, his jaw working as he came and sat next to Clark on the bed. "It would kill you."

"Yes," Clark said, turning towards Lex. "Please."

Lex shuddered at Clark's eyes. They were white, surrounded by horrific burn scars. The scars covered his face from one cheek to the other temple in a gash of ugly, contorted skin. His hands were enveloped in burn scars, transforming them into worthless claw-like appendages. Burn scars striped his arms all the way up and under the short sleeves of his soft sleep shirt.

Lex knew they covered Clark's legs and stomach as well. Nearly every inch of Clark's body was covered in the burns, at least on the front. He hadn't been able to inflict them on his back, thank goodness. Lex swallowed down nausea at the thought of Clark hurting himself this way. It never should have come to this yet Lex had no way to make it end that he would accept.

Lex gestured for Mercy to put the tray of food on the bedside table next to the chunk of gently glowing kryptonite that Clark insisted had to be close. Lex loathed that piece rock despite, or perhaps especially, because it was so necessary. Clark sighed, frowning silently as he realized that someone was with Lex.

"Please Lex," Clark pleaded in his broken voice. "She's going to win. She's going to take me over. You have to kill me. You can't let her win. I don't want to serve her."

"I can't do that, Clark," Lex whispered, taking the small bowl of applesauce. The spoon quivered in his fingers.

"You have to," Clark said, turning his face away as Lex tried to feed the applesauce to him. "I have to die. It's the only way. She has the Fortress. She has Jor-El. They'll replace me with another version of Kal-El that will obey them. Please. You can't let her win. She'll destroy the world."

"Killing you won't stop her," Lex said. He set the bowl and spoon down too hard. They clanked loudly in the quiet room.

"Yes it will," Clark said with total conviction. "The Fortress needs a Kryptonian, Lex. If I'm dead then the Fortress will die. If the Fortress dies then Genevieve has no power. Jason loses the powers she gave him. The world will be saved. The only way to save the world is to kill me. Please Lex. Please. You have to kill me. I'm not strong enough to kill myself anymore. You're the only one who can do it. Please. Please Lex. Kill me."

"I can't!" Lex shouted, bolting to his feet. "Damn it, Clark. I can't do that. I… I can't kill someone I care about that way!"

He couldn't say the words. Even when they'd first met he'd had a hard time saying the word 'love'. After four years with Clark in his life and then losing him for another five years while Genevieve took over the world with her son Jason at her side Lex had been fairly certain that he was incapable of love. He'd searched for Clark the entire time, at first convinced that Clark had helped Genevieve and then convinced that Clark was the key to defeating her.

He'd never expected what they had eventually found. Mercy finally located Clark living as a vagrant under a broken highway underpass. Clark's beautiful body was covered in burns, all of which he'd inflicted on himself with the aid of a small hand mirror. His mind was shattered. He hadn't known any of them at first and only came to recognize Lex after he was exposed to kryptonite. He was only rational when he was in pain. Only while suffering did he remember who he was. Only when he was on the verge of death did the boy Lex had known come back to his shattered body. Genevieve had found a way of rewriting Clark's mind from a distance. She was taking him apart by inches and there was nothing that Lex could do to save him except for torture him.

"If you care at all about the world you will," Clark said. His expression was sympathetic but immovable. "Lex, please. I'm so tired. Every day she replaces a little more of me. I can't remember what Mom and Dad were like. I can't remember my childhood. I can't tell what memories are real and what are fake. Please. She's killing my soul. I don't want to die by her hand. You have to help me. I'm begging you. Save me. Kill me. Save the world."

Lex shuddered and stomped out of the room. He went to the atrium with the plants he'd collected from around the world. So many of them were going extinct out there. His atrium was one of the few places where they existed now. Lex stared down at Metropolis. It was dark and gray, most buildings shattered and broken. Lex's building was studded with chunks of kryptonite and painted with lead. The heavy armor and many defenders had protected it against Jason's attacks. His building was secure but the rest of the world was slowly falling to Genevieve's power.

"Sir," Mercy said in her most neutral tone of voice. Her body was a living exclamation point of alarm. "The Fortress is glowing again."

"Fuck!" Lex snarled as he ran back to Clark's room.

Clark convulsed silently on his bed. His blind eyes stared up at the ceiling. His face was contorted with pain and confusion. Lex cursed and grabbed the chunk of kryptonite. He pressed it against Clark's chest. He could literally see the way Clark's blood began to boil and his muscles cramped around the meteorite.

Clark screamed.

The scream went on and on and on. Lex cursed and prayed while he counted the seconds. He prayed that Genevieve would back off. He cursed as the torture went on. Mercy watched the monitor that they'd set up to observe the Fortress. The glow continued. At one minute Lex had tears running down his cheek. Clark's voice was starting to break. At three minutes his cheeks were dry and Clark's voice was gone. He still screamed but his throat was no longer able to make noise.

"Bring it," Lex snapped.

"Yes sir," Mercy said.

She ran from the room, returning less than half a minute later with a long narrow box. She opened it and offered the kryptonite stake to Lex. Her normally impassive face showed only sympathy. She didn't offer to do the deed. Lex probably would have killed her for it if she had.

"I'm sorry, Clark," Lex whispered as he took up the stake. "I hope that you're right. If you're not right I'll destroy the world myself just to get rid of that bitch."

Lex braced himself and looked at the monitor for a moment in the vain hope that the Fortress would stop glowing. It didn't. Lex shut his eyes, opened them and then stood over Clark's shuddering body. Lex set the stake and then shoved as hard as he could into Clark's chest. The stake glowed like an evil green lantern as it slid between Clark's ribs.

Clark gasped as his whole body locked up. His back arched like a bow being drawn. Lex shoved harder, burying the stake in Clark's heart. Clark's body shuddered once and then collapsed bonelessly on the bed. His expression shifted from pain and fear to blessed relief. At the same moment the kryptonite stake stopped glowing.

"Clark," Lex whispered his throat raw with emotion. He looked up at the monitor showing the Fortress. The glow had gone out entirely. It was normally lit softly from within even when Genevieve wasn't working but it finally gone dark. It looked dead

"I… think it worked, sir," Mercy said. Her voice was rough with emotions that Lex wouldn't have thought that she was capable of feeling.

"Find Jason," Lex ordered. "I want him brought here. Have a pallet set up in the sunroom."

"Yes sir," Mercy said.

She turned, leaving Lex alone with Clark's lifeless body. After she closed the door Lex shuddered and allowed the sobs to emerge. It took an hour before he could regain his self-control. Once he'd washed his face and cleaned Clark's body Lex carried it to the sunroom, leaving the steak in place for now. Until he was sure about Genevieve and Jason, he didn't dare remove it. Clark had done more incredible things than return from the dead. He wouldn't give Jason or Genevieve a reprieve by prematurely removing the stake that had ended their rule.

It took sixteen hours for Mercy to come back with Jason. She dragged him in by his hair, tossing him bound and gagged at Lex's feet. Lex looked down at him, seeing the young man he'd known before the meteor shower looking back at him rather than the imperious super powered being that they'd come to fear in the last five years.

"Jason," Lex said. "Do you remember what you've done?"

Jason shook his head no. He shuddered at the look in Lex's eyes. Lex knelt in front of him, carefully removing the gag so that Jason could speak.

"Lex, man, what the hell is going on?" Jason asked as soon as the gag was removed. "One minute I was in Smallville and then the next I was on top of a building in Star City and half the city was on fire."

"You happened," Lex said in his gentlest voice. "You and your mother. She found the Elements of Power. She combined them and took over your mind. She turned you into a superhuman, gifted you with powers beyond any other's. You used them to murder millions, Jason. You, personally, are responsible for the death of over three million people."

"No," Jason breathed. He started shaking in shock.

"Yes," Lex said, cupping Jason's cheek with the prosthetic hand he'd crafted after Jason had severed his real hand. "And you made me murder Clark."

Jason's eyes flicked over to the pallet resting in a puddle of sunshine. They widened as he finally recognized the shrunken form of his former student. Jason went paler still. He stopped struggling though his shaking increased. Lex waited until Jason met his eyes again.

"The world's in ruins," Lex confided. "You and your mother have destroyed the world. The only person who could have saved it lies dead on that pallet. Because you tortured him so badly, I couldn't endure it any longer. I had to kill him. I had to kill him because it was the only way to save the world. I had to kill Clark with my own hands. Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Jason?"

"Lex…" Jason tried to come up with something to say. The words died as he stared into Lex's eyes.

Lex nodded, resting his good hand on Jason's shoulder. Jason looked reassured until Lex abruptly twisted his head, snapping his neck easily with the strength of his prosthetic hand. Lex let Jason's body fall to the floor. Mercy sneered down at Jason's body.

"Get this out of here," Lex ordered. "Make sure that everyone knows that he's dead. Display the body if that's what it takes. I want to know the instant our teams reach the Fortress. I need to know if Genevieve is dead or alive."

It took another twenty-seven hours for Genevieve's body to be recovered from the cold, dead remains of her Fortress. Lex took great satisfaction in the news that she'd frozen to death once it died. Clark had been right. The only way to save the world had been to kill him. It was cold comfort as Lex carefully removed the kryptonite stake from Clark's heart.

"Will you contact his family?" Mercy asked. She calmly closed the lead box around the blood-stained stake, holding it at her side.

"Not yet," Lex said, shivering at the thought of letting the Kent's see Clark's body. "I… need a little time first, Mercy."

"Of course sir," Mercy said, leaving them alone.

Lex sighed, sitting on his chair next to Clark's body. She wasn't leaving _them_ alone. She was leaving Lex alone with Clark's corpse. Lex had to fight off another wave of the damned tears at the fresh realization that Clark was gone. He sat by Clark's body until the sun set. He watched the stars come out overhead, pondering what to do next. There were so few lights left in Metropolis that he could see the Milky Way overhead. He'd always wanted to rule the world but now there seemed to be little point. Lionel was long dead, murdered by Jason in the early days of Genevieve's reign. There was no point to trying to do something that would earn a dead parent's approval. Clark was dead. There was no point in trying to live up to a dead friend's expectations. Lex couldn't find a reason to do anything besides sit beside Clark's lifeless body.

Lex was still sitting there when the sun came up. He looked down at Clark, frowning and then coming to full alert.

"Clark?" Lex whispered.

Clark's skin had lost the greenish tint that had marked his corpse. His skin was still waxy, lifeless, but he looked strangely better. Lex's breath caught in his chest. He pulled the sheet down, exposing the wound he'd inflicted on Clark. The skin had closed up. There was still a divot where the stake had gone in but the wound had closed.

"Fucking hell…!"

"Sir?" Mercy said, appearing at the door.

"He's not dead," Lex said, looking at her while excitement drummed through his veins. "He's not dead, Mercy."

"Sir…"

"Look!" Lex pointed at Clark's chest imperiously.

Mercy raised an eyebrow and came over to look. She rocked back on her heels before carefully running her fingers over the now-healed wound. Her eyes narrowed as if she was pondering how to make the wound come back. She straightened up, nodding slowly.

"I would suggest getting more sunlight on him, Sir," Mercy said. "Perhaps some sunlamps?"

"Excellent idea. Do it."

It took a month of constant sun exposure for Clark's heart to start beating every couple of minutes. Lex had hooked up heart monitors and EEG's to Clark in the meantime. He worked feverishly in the meantime, working to rebuild the world so that Clark would have something worth waking up to. Once his heart started beating regularly Lex allowed Martha and Jonathan to come in.

"Oh Jonathan!" Martha sobbed at seeing the scars that still covered Clark's body.

"They're much better than they were," Lex hastily reassured her. "The scars are fading. I think in six months or so he'll be back to normal. Providing he wakes up, of course."

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Jonathan asked, his voice rough with unshed tears.

"I wasn't sure his heart would keep beating," Lex admitted. "I didn't want to get your hopes up only to destroy them. His heart stabilized during the night. It's been irregular ever since it started up a week ago. He still isn't breathing properly. I'm hopeful that that will stabilize soon too."

Jonathan nodded, holding Martha close. She cried into Jonathan's shirt for a little while, eventually wiping her tears and turning back to her son. Her bottom lip wobbled but she didn't cry again. Instead she turned to Lex, determination infusing her entire body as she gazed up at him.

"We want to stay here with Clark," Martha declared.

"You're welcome to," Lex said, nodding approval. "There's… a very good possibility that Clark won't be sane when he wakes up. Genevieve was slowly destroying his mind before she died. I don't know what state he'll be in when he comes out of his coma."

"It doesn't matter," Jonathan said, squeezing Martha's shoulder reassuringly. "Whatever happens, we'll be here for him."

"And for you, Lex," Martha said with a stern look over her shoulder at Jonathan. "You found him. You saved him. You've given him back to us."

"I killed him," Lex said, turning away from them.

"And that saved him," Martha said, catching his arm so that he couldn't escape. "Lex, Clark has never been like anyone else. He's easy to love but very hard to deal with. It's okay. You did what you had to to keep Clark from becoming something monstrous. Trust me, I understand. I've done it too. It's hard but in the end you have to have faith that you did the right thing. I think you did exactly what had to be done. Thank you."

Lex sighed, smiling at her. It was a weak smile and Lex knew it but he did his best. Mercy took the Kents away and gave them a suite in the building. They started spelling Lex by Clark's side. Martha helped him with the work of rebuilding the world. She had a brilliant administrative mind. Jonathan took over tending the sunroom's plants, creating a Garden of Eden for Clark to wake up to. He brought in many vegetable plants and fruit trees, growing enough food for them all to eat in very short order. His farm was gone, destroyed, but Jonathan was still a farmer.

Three months after Clark's heart started beating his breathing stabilized. It coincided with Mercy bringing in a very defensive and frightened Chloe Sullivan accompanied by her cousin Lois Lane. Lex wondered if it was coincidence but he couldn't dismiss that there might be a connection. Clark had always been very fond of Chloe. He needed his friends and family much the same way he needed the sunshine.

"He's alive?" Chloe whispered. Her fingers traced over the faint burn scars that still marked Clark's face. His eyes were green again but no intelligence shown out of them when they opened.

"He's in a deep coma," Lex explained. "He keeps improving slowly. I'm hopeful that he'll be back to normal sometime in the next year or so. I don't know for sure that it'll happen but it is Clark."

"Wake up, Smallville!" Lois snapped. She had tears in her eyes that didn't match the annoyed tone of her voice. "We're all working our butts off and you're lying there sleeping."

"Lois," Chloe huffed.

Lex found Lois' abrasive nature nearly as annoying as Clark once had. Chloe turned into a brilliant advisor, helping with setting up the news industry. Lex wasn't pleased when she reported what had happened to Clark but it produced a wave of sympathy and cooperation so he forgave her for doing it against his orders. Lois became a cop, tracking down all the people who had supported and aided Genevieve. When they were captured she moved on to helping keep order in the new world that they were building.

"It's been seven months, thirteen days, Clark," Lex said one sunny morning. "It's my birthday. I didn't want to admit it at the time but you were right. I did have to kill you to save the world. You should have told me that it wouldn't be permanent. I would have done it far sooner and saved you a lot of suffering if I'd known that the kryptonite couldn't kill you forever."

"Sorry…"

Lex froze. He looked down into Clark's eyes, for the first time in ages seeing _Clark_ looking back at him. Clark smiled at him. His arm trembled. Clark frowned, trying to look down at his arm.

"Can't move," Clark whispered. Alarm spread across his face. His eyes locked onto Lex's.

"Well, you've been mostly dead for months," Lex said around the joy and tears crowding his throat. "You should expect it to take a little while before you can move freely."

Clark grinned, laughter shaking his chest though only a tiny wheeze came out. Lex laughed with him, taking Clark's hand into his own. Tears fell from Lex's chin onto Clark's bare arm. Lex couldn't have cared less. Clark was back.

"Saved me," Clark said. His eyes were already starting to flutter tiredly.

"Well, you saved me," Lex said, petting Clark's hand gently. "I had to return the favor. You can save me next time."

"Deal," Clark said. He smiled as he fell asleep.

Lex carefully put Clark's hand on his chest. He suspected that there would be a great deal of physical therapy before Clark would return to his former glory. He was too thin and too weak. He still had burn scars marking much of his body though they had faded dramatically as he'd slowly returned to life. Lex stood, heading towards the door to call Mercy, the Kents, Chloe and Lois.

It didn't matter how long it took. Clark was back. Everything would be okay now.


End file.
